Time Lord is a short game where your objective in each level is to collect 5 pearl like objects and beat a boss to proceed to the next level. The requirements for collecting each pearl are different (and occasionally obscure.) This run features several improvements to the original:
- Mushroom farming in level 2 is optimized to not require any back tracking.
- It turns out killing the first electric eel you encounter in level 4 deactivates the field protecting the field, so you can collect it with minimal back tracking.
- Throwing a knife at the elevated pearl in level 4 is slightly faster then jumping down to get it.
- Better luck manipulation on the pearl near the fish and on the package drops prevents a lot of backtracking in level 5.
This run is also the culmination of my work on NES emulation improvements. It is effected by DMC glitch, uses the DMC IRQ, and has tight timing requirements for RNG. This is the first time it works entirely correctly.
The last boss of the game (and seemingly nothing else) happens to be effected by uninitialized RAM. I have a RAM clearing cart, so this normally wouldn't be an issue, but the game also happens to use the DMC channel. This causes the unfortunate contradiction that for the RAM to be set, the game can only be powered off for a very brief period of time after the clearing cart is used, but for the DMC timer to be cleared, the game must be off for a much longer time. As it turns out, by using zero initial RAM state instead of the typical emulator pattern, the run syncs just fine, so this run is console verified, which is one of my goals in improving NES emulation so I'm happy to see it happen.
CasualPokePlayer: Claiming for judging.
CasualPokePlayer: Replaced movie file with console verified version (with last frame trimmed off).
CasualPokePlayer: Movie seems well optimized, and a solid improvement over the current publication. Accepting.
EZGames69: Processing...